Tuesday, July 29, 2014

A writer is facing legal action from Madrid's Jewish community after writing an opinion piece in a leading Spanish daily in which he justified the expulsion of Jews throughout history on the basis that they aren't made to coexist

Antonio Gala, a Spanish playwright and author, has angered Spain’s Jewish community with a piece titled 'The chosen ones?' published in El Mundo. The award-winning 83-year-old starts off by arguing that the Jewish people "could have done a lot of good for humanity: for their prudence, endurance, apparent religious fidelity and proven administration of money". He then says that what has always happened is that they end up troubling those they live with, "as if they weren't made to coexist". "No matter what (the Jews) call their civil or military leaders" they always end up creating problems, he argues. Gala then makes the only mention of the current Gaza conflict in his short op-ed piece, stating that "now it’s Gaza’s turn to suffer their abuses" thanks to the "pressure from a power situated elsewhere in the world and an invisible community of blood". David Hatchwell, business mogul and president of Madrid’s Jewish community, plans to use a clause in Spain’s legal code which prohibits "anti-Semitic" discourse to justify his organization’s lawsuit.

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